What's good for the goose: Wawa closing first store

RIDLEY TOWNSHIP — The Wawa on MacDade Boulevard and Swarthmore Avenue — the company’s very first convenience store that opened 50 years ago — will soon be gone, but won’t be forgotten.

“It will still be store (No.) 1 for us, even though it’s a new store,” said Susan Bratton, regional real estate manager for Wawa.

Bratton was speaking about the planned development of a new, larger Wawa with six gasoline islands slated for a 4-acre site at MacDade Boulevard and Kedron Avenue (Route 420). John Harper of Harper Associates, owners of the land, said he hopes construction can begin in the spring of 2015.

The site includes seven residential houses and two apartments that will be demolished.

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The new Wawa development was opposed by township commissioners last year and the township zoning hearing board denied a series of variances needed to develop the site.

Harper appealed the zoning board’s decision in the Delaware County Court of Common Pleas and Senior Judge Stephen McEwen ordered both sides to meet and negotiate, which resulted in approval of the new retail development with certain conditions. They include extending the berm on the property, lowering the lights, fencing, building construction of brick and stone, and limiting the hours of tractor-trailer deliveries.

“We are very excited ... we will be open by the spring of 2016. People are going to be so excited,” Bratton said.

Bratton said the company hopes to include some historic photography of the original store in the new building.

She noted that the first Wawa was built in the ’60s.

“It’s important that people know this is where we started,” Bratton said.

The fate of the building at MacDade Boulevard and Swarthmore Avenue is not up to Wawa. Bratton explained that the company does not own the land where the store is located. The township is home to five Wawa stores.

There are locations at MacDade and Bullens Lane, Fairview Road, Morton Avenue, MacDade at Holmes Road, and of course, the iconic Wawa at MacDade and Swarthmore Avenue.

“We are not planning on closing other stores in Ridley Township and surrounding communities,” Bratton said.

Southeastern Pennsylvania is no longer the domain of Wawa stores. Bratton said the company has stores in New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. There are none in North or South Carolina, or Georgia. But Florida is another matter.

While Wawa officials are happy about the court’s decision that will permit the new Wawa at MacDade and Kedron Avenue, at least two Wawa shoppers who live on Swarthmore Avenue, across the street from the soon-to-close store, are not at all happy about losing the convenience of having Wawa a matter of feet from their front door.

“I’m devastated,” said Denise Master. “This store has been a staple here in the neighborhood. I will definitely miss just walking across the street to the store. This is a bummer.”

Denise’s daughter, Danielle Master, echoed her mother’s dismay at the news that her neighborhood Wawa will be closing.

“It’s been there forever,” Danielle said. “I go there for fountain soda and to take money out (of the ATM),” she said.